Page 102 - Xara Designer Pro X17

102 Object Handling

Text Synchronization
In some circumstances text objects in a soft group are kept synchronized so that if you
edit the text of one, the others update too. This feature was added before support for LIVE
COPIES was introduced and LIVE COPIES are much more flexible and powerful, so this
feature is less useful than it used to be. But it’s still relied upon by many of the templates
and elements included in the ONLINE CONTENT CATALOG and is commonly used for
mouse-over buttons, where both the off and over states of the button need to show the
same label at all times. When the button off-state label is changed, the mouse-over state
changes to match.

Also sometimes "shadow-like" effects can be achieved by placing two or more copies of
text very close to each other, but slightly offset. Again, editing one causes them all to
change in sync.

To stay synchronized, the text objects must:

• Be all in the same soft group.
• And have exactly the same text on them at the time when the soft group is created.
• And either have overlapping bounding boxes, or be on different layers or different
animation frames.

If you need text to stay synchronized in other circumstances, use LIVE COPIES (ON PAGE
112).

Alignment

This lets you accurately align or distribute two or more objects.

Quick aligning
Select the objects you want to align, and right click the selection to choose ALIGN from
the drop-down menu, and then do one of the following:

• Align the objects vertically by choosing LEFT EDGES, CENTERS, DISTRIBUTE CENTERS or
RIGHT EDGES.
• Align the objects horizontally by choosing TOP EDGES, CENTERS, DISTRIBUTE CENTERS
or BOTTOM EDGES.

Aligning and distributing space
If you want to distribute space between the objects as well as align them, select the
objects, right click the selection and choose "ALIGN" > "ALIGNMENT" to display the Object
Alignment dialog. Alternatively choose "ARRANGE" > "ALIGNMENT" ("Ctrl + + L").